It remains to be seen if George Foulidis, whose restaurant was awarded a controversial, long-term, untendered, exclusive lease on prime waterfront parkland by the City of Toronto, was defamed by the fellow who is one of the most newsworthy mayors in Canada, Rob Ford.

The trial began in Ontario Superior Court Judge John Macdonald’s courtroom only Tuesday and will continue all week. It’s too soon to read the tea leaves.

But one thing is abundantly clear: The mayor may or may not have lawlessly badmouthed Foulidis, but the municipal bureaucracy and the unique Toronto city council way of doing business — that is, primal chaos — sure screwed him over.

The propriety of the city not tendering such a big project in the first place aside, Foulidis had no easy ride through the bureaucracy.

The deal was first approved by city council on Oct. 2, 2006. Foulidis, silly man, thought it was all over but the shouting.

In fact, it was just beginning.

What happened is that the proposal bounced among committees — most of which confirmed the deal — and was sent back to council twice more for further tinkering and re-approval.

Only in June of 2010 did Foulidis actually get to sign the lease with the city — almost four long years after it was first okayed.

As a glimpse of what it’s like to do business in Toronto, it was utterly terrifying.

As Foulidis, who is in the midst of his testimony, said at one point, about one or another of these bewildering re-thinks, “I was very angry and upset, totally shocked and surprised that they were discussing the subject that was discussed already so many times.”

He is suing Ford for $6 million for remarks the mayor may or may not have made about the lease — Ford’s lawyer, Gavin Tighe, suggested in his opening statement that some of the disputed comments were paraphrases of what Ford told a Toronto Sun editorial board meeting during the 2010 municipal election.

Foulidis is also suing Bruce Baker, an unsuccessful candidate in the same election for the ward in which Foulidis’s restaurant is located, for $100,000 for distributing an allegedly defamatory letter about him.

With this common background, the two claims are being heard together.

Originally from Greece, Foulidis, his father and brother first owned a restaurant north of Toronto, in Stouffville; they sold it, and after a break, Foulidis opened a concession stand at a canoe club.

In 1986, he responded to a Request for Proposal the city put out for the construction of a restaurant in what’s known locally as the eastern beaches. In exchange for that sizable investment — some $2 million for a 20-year lease, Foulidis claims — the operator would be given a long-term contract and exclusive rights for food and beverage concessions in the three-to-four kilometres of parkland.

Foulidis won that RFP, and under the corporate name of Tuggs Inc. ran the restaurant called the Boardwalk Cafe and some concession stands.

The lease was set to expire in September of 2007, and as the big day approached, Foulidis began lobbying for another long-term contract.

But by then, a judicial inquiry into allegations of conflict of interest and bribery surrounding computer-leasing contracts the city had inked was complete, there was a new propriety in the air, and for a number of reasons, Foulidis’s discussions with parks staff went nowhere.

Staff told him, he said, there might have to be another RFP; would he want to participate? Yes, he replied.

By 2005-06, with the contract close to expiry and no decision on the horizon, Foulidis prepared an unsolicited proposal for a second, similar contract.

The first parks staff report urged the city to go to an RFP — in other words, to go through the usual competitive process.

It was that recommendation council overturned, instead supporting Foulidis’s proposal. Then the thing was trapped in the endless municipal machinery.

Ford is vigorously defending the case. Tighe called the case “a SLAPP lawsuit” — short for strategic lawsuit against public participation — that was “designed to silence debate” during the election campaign. “That’s what it was — a classic case of tactical litigation,” he snapped Tuesday in his opening statement. “And it remains that to this day.”

Ford’s defence appears to be multi-pronged: that he didn’t say the words the Sun story said he had (and there is apparently no tape of the key meeting); that in any case he had no idea who Foulidis was and was “talking about the process by which this entire deal got done”; and that the topic of the lease was a huge issue in the campaign (as indeed it was), and thus part of the freewheeling debate of a constitutional democracy.

Ford himself was in court all day, sitting quietly behind Tighe, and though he will testify here, he won’t be available Wednesday or Thursday afternoon, his lawyer said.

The fifth-floor courtroom was jammed to the rafters with media, including what seemed like the entire City Hall press corps. Given the mayor’s regular absences from City Hall to coach his football team, these reporters demonstrated a refreshing familiarity with the schedule of that team, the Don Bosco Eagles.

This trial marks Ford’s second appearance in a courtroom in recent months.

In September, he testified in an unrelated conflict-of-interest complaint, with the ruling as yet not released.

Christie Blatchford was born in Quebec and studied journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto. She has written for all four Toronto-based newspapers. She has won a National Newspaper Award for column... read more writing and in 2008 won the Governor-General’s Literary Award in non-fiction for her book Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army.View author's profile